


vulnerable, all-knowing

by Anonymous



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 18:44:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17772215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: He doesn't expect Elias to be the one to save him.





	vulnerable, all-knowing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amber/gifts).



> set while jon was kidnapped by nikola in canon.

Jon doesn’t expect to be saved. Not by Elias, certainly - isn’t Beholding all about watching without acting? Doesn’t Elias keep pushing him to _care less_? - and it’s not as though there’s anyone else to do it.

He doesn’t expect to come to to find the bindings gone and Elias carrying him out of the place he’d been held, to find Elias glancing down at him when he wakes and looking… composed, yes, but with a certain wildness to his eyes that gives Jon pause. There’s wetness against Jon’s bare skin and seeping into what’s left of his clothes wherever Elias is touching him, and he finds that he’d rather _not_ contemplate what that is, exactly.

“Elias,” he tries to say, but his voice cracks in his throat and Elias doesn’t so much as look down at him again.

He doesn’t like it, but he suspects that that’s how Elias is choosing to tell him not to speak right now. He also thinks, though he couldn’t explain where the thought comes from, that Elias doesn’t currently trust himself to speak and actually tell him that directly. That, with regards to Elias - who’s always so composed and proper and detached, except that he also shot Gertrude and beat Leitner to death and whose suit is currently covered in something that Jon is trying awfully hard not to think about - is… mildly terrifying, actually.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be, after all the things Jon has faced and after spending two weeks tied to a chair in an old waxwork museum by monsters.

Perhaps it should be, because Elias is no more human than the rest of them.

“Quite,” Elias says then, so soft and quiet that Jon can almost convince himself that he didn’t hear it at all.

* * *

Elias drives Jon back to his flat in silence, and to make matters worse it’s in the kind of fancy building that Jon wouldn’t feel all that confident in even if he _weren’t_ wearing nothing but the scraps of the clothes he put on two weeks ago before he was bundled into the back of a van. Elias doesn’t seem concerned at all about them being seen, though, and Jon very much hopes that that’s because he can tell that they won’t be seen and not that he simply doesn’t care.

Inside, Elias helps him to the bathroom and then leaves him to it with a short, clipped, _Call me if you need me, Jon_ , before he disappears off into another room.

Jon is left almost shaken by the sudden loss of Elias’ presence - he’s had too much time alone since he was taken, and right now being alone again doesn’t quite sit right with him - but he forces himself to shake it off and get himself into the bath, run hot enough to be almost torture even as it’s absolutely heavenly at the same time.

Jon stays in there long enough that the water is starting to cool and he still feels like he could fall asleep in it before Elias opens the door and just stands there, watching him. He’s in a fresh suit, all perfectly-groomed and proper again apart from a dark graze on his jawbone that Jon had taken for just dirt before. Jon probably ought to be embarrassed about Elias watching him in the bath - probably will be when he’s rested, for that matter - but right now he just can’t work up the feeling.

“If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought you’d drowned in there,” Elias comments, and though his tone is light there’s something off about it. As though he’s trying too hard to sound normal.

“I hardly think you’d have let that happen, after you actually got involved to save me.”

Elias twitches, just barely visible unless you’re looking for it, and Jon finds himself with a feeling as though he’s hovering by a precipice; Elias is, very clearly, not as in control of himself as he usually is. Given who and what Elias is, he’s reasonably certain that the smart move would be to back off, to let Elias get himself back under control and things return to normal.

Nobody has ever accused Jonathan Sims of making the smart moves in life.

“Why _did_ you save me? Aren’t you all about just observing?”

He finds desperately wants to know the answer, actually, and he lets that ring through; lets himself try to compel it out of Elias, never expecting to actually succeed.

Definitely not expecting Elias to shudder, to open his mouth and say in words that come ragged from his throat like they’ve been dragged out against his every will, “An Archivist can be replaced. _You_ can’t, Jon, not to me.”

Elias’ eyes are wild after the words come out, and then he’s surging forward and clapping his hand over Jon’s mouth with his other hand tight on the back of Jon’s neck so that he couldn’t pull free even if he wanted to. Which he very much should want to, shouldn’t just be frozen in Elias’ grip with his breath rushing out through his nose and his pulse thundering in his ears. But every part of Elias’ attention is focused on him right now, nothing but him and him alone, and Jon thinks this must be how mice feel under the eyes of a hawk; frozen, paralyzed, _observed_.

He doesn’t know how long it lasts. Doesn’t know how long they stay there, Elias’ hand over his mouth in the most basic way of stopping his compulsion and Elias’ attention solely, unwaveringly, upon Jon and nothing else. He only knows that the water is cold by the time Elias finally moves back, and that if Elias’ fingers trail too long against his lips as he pulls his hand away Jon thinks he understands why, now, even if he doesn’t know what to make of that understanding.

They’re both silent as Elias leaves the room again, and for all that the silence - for all that eventually leaving the bathroom to find nothing but a folded pile of his own clothes outside with a note on top telling him which door is the guest room and to help himself to food - leaves Jon definitely feeling bereft and out of sorts, he thinks it might be for the best right now.

(tomorrow, Elias will have had time to recover his walls; tomorrow, Jon will have had time to rest; tomorrow, they need never speak of _that_ moment again)


End file.
